I Say Yesterday, You Hear Tomorrow. Visions from Japan

Many pieces within the Japanese Imago Mundi Collection use recurring motifs, such as clocks, radioactive warning signs, the mushroom cloud, or a phoenix. In “The View”, artist Kou Maeda captures the atom bomb as it hovers between a flying dragon and the city below, suspended in the critical moment between peace and devastation. By bringing these works together in one space, they become reminders of the lessons we can learn from humanity’s prior mistakes.

In Japanese culture, earlier events are used as catalysts for progress and modernization. In roughly seventy years, the nation achieved an economic renaissance and rebuilt society from the ashes of war’s destruction. Exploring this notion further, the exhibition includes the first photographs in Nagasaki after the explosion by Yosuke Yamahata, the documentary “Nagasaki Journey” by Chris Beaver, and a series of historical sketches by Katsushika Hokusai.

I Say Yesterday, You Hear Tomorrow presents how the cyclical process of action, reflection, and innovation is juxtaposed with an enduring respect for nature. Elements of traditional Japanese practices are incorporated into the visitor’s journey throughout the building, highlighting the subtle connections between life, ritual, and temporality. The artists – including Nobumichi Asai, the collective Don’t Follow the Wind, Jacob Hashimoto, Keita Miyazaki, Adoka Niitsu, and Junya Oikawa – respond to historical events and personal narratives, revealing wider changes in society or self-identity. From installation, painting, video, to photography and sculpture, a diverse range of creative techniques draws awareness to collective traumas, evokes nature, raises questions about current national and environmental affairs, experiments with new media, and celebrates the present. In the end, we are asked: what do you truly hear when someone mentions “yesterday”, or “tomorrow”?  The exhibition invites us to consider our own relationship to time, nature and humanity, and to imagine alternative solutions to the problems of today for a better tomorrow.